I’ve written before on the benefits of partnering on book campaigns and I thought it might be helpful to break some of those points down for you in greater detail. Today’s brief tutorial is brought to you by the letters ‘B’ and ‘G’ and by the number ‘0’ – that’s Sesame Street for Bonus Gifts at zero cost to you. What – you have kids – don’t you?
One of the best things you can do for your online business is to build a database of prospective customers and one of the easiest ways to do it is by offering valuable free gifts on book launches.
Create downloadable free gifts that are content rich and convey your message well so people get a good understanding of what you’re all about. Here are some ideas to get you started:
- Special tip sheets
- Quizzes that help them better understand their problem and why you have the solution
- Posters that highlight the main lessons you teach people
- Mini-workbooks with exercises you’ve created, including those you have demonstrated on stage or in your book
- Weekly, monthly, or quarterly newsletters with new updates and features
- Daily tips, quotations, or words of wisdom
- Audio files of recorded interviews or teleseminars
- Transcripts from interviews or teleseminars
- User guides with templates for putting your strategies into action
- Analysis tools
Once you’ve created your gift, it’s time to set up an “opt-in” page to capture the contact information of all the people that collect your gift.
What I recommend (especially if you’re paying for someone to set this up on your web site because you don’t have a shopping cart yet) is to design a simple and generic opt-in page. Don’t make it specific to any one bonus gift. Instead, keep your language as generic as possible so you can use the same opt-in page and bonus gift for several different campaigns at once. That way you’ll be continuously adding customers to your list without spending a lot of time or money switching your page around.
If you have a shopping cart program like 1 shopping cart or kick start cart, it’s a simple process to create an opt-in. Just go to the E-Mail Marketing Tab drop down and click on “custom forms”. This brings up an entire list of items you can have on your opt-in form – but don’t add anything except name and e-mail. People tend to leave your page if you ask for more information than that.
There is also a box that asks for a Thank You URL on this page. This is essentially where you want your potential customer to be taken after they fill in the information. You have some choices here: in your shopping cart, you can set this up to go directly to a web page with your download on it (this is what I recommend because it’s easy and once you set it up, you can forget about it) OR you could set it up on an autoresponder which e-mails the link to the download to each person (this option is a bit awkward and adds an unnecessary step).
Once you’ve made your choice click “next” or “continue” and you’ll get a page with your html code. Simply copy this code and paste it into a new page of your web site. On your web site, you’ll have to click the “source” or “html” box before you paste it in. Then save it Name, Email and Submit boxes will appear. Add whatever text you’d like to the page – thanks for your interest in my products, enjoy your free download, etc. and your opt-in page is complete!
Now all you’ve got to do is sign up as a partner on a book launch and show off your new gift. As a partner you’ll be asked to send out an announcement of the books’ release to your list or include it in your newsletter or post it on facebook or tweet it. So whether you have a list or not, you can still participate through social media.
For a list of Hasmark’s Upcoming Campaigns go to http://hasmarkservices.com/upcoming.htm and get started today! Don’t forget that for each campaign you participate in, you’re entered to win your very own Best Seller campaign!!
Thanks to Kathi Casey http://www.kathicaseypilates.com/ and Peggy McColl’s ’99 Things You Wish You Knew Before Marketing on the Internet’ http://peggys99things.com/ for their parts in creating this blog.
